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Industrial Exhibitions : Their True Function in 
Connection with Industrial Education. 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



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TWENTY-FIFTH TRIENNIAL FESTIVAL, 



Mechanics' Building, Huntington Avenue, Boston, 



November 22, 1881. V * v ^-^'^^ 






By EDWARD ATKINSON. 



BOSTON: 

WRIGHT & POTTER PRINTING CO., 

18 Post Office Square. 

1882. 



INVITATION AND ACCEPTANCE. 



Special Associatiox Meeting, \ 
Boston, Dec. 21, 1881. j 

On motion of Andrew M. McPhail, it was nnanimonsly 

Voted, That the thanks of the Association be presented to Ed- 
ward Atkinson, Esq., for his interesting and instructive address 
on the occasion of the celebration of the Twenty-Eifth Triennial 
Eestival of the Association, November 22 last, and that he be 
invited to furnish a copy of the same for the press. 



Boston, Dec. 23, 1881. 
Joseph L. Bates, Esq., Secretary: — 

Dear Sir: — I have received your note of the 23d, with the 
pleasant information regarding the vote passed by the Associa- 
tion. I enclose a copy of my address for publication. 

Sincerely yours, , 

ED WD ATKINSON. 



ADDRESS. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : — 

It is a great honor and pleasure to me to have been 
chosen to speak to you this evening. The rule of our 
Association is, I ])elieve, that whoever gives the trien- 
nial address must be a member. Now membership in 
this Association implies that the person must be either 
a mechanic or an object of charity ; I am not a me- 
chanic according to the customary use of that word, 
and I hope I am not yet an object of charity. How 
then shall I justify you in having admitted me ? My 
life has been identified with the spinning and weaving 
of cotton cloth ; that would constitute me in common 
speech a manufacturer, and would relegate me to the 
company at the other end of the avenue ; but much as 
I honor the living and the dead to whom that great 
enterprise owes its existence I yet prefer your com- 
pany. 

" The Lord do so to me, and more also, 
If aught but death part you and me." 
And by you will I be buried. 

But where, then, is your justification? If I am 
neither mechanic nor, as yet, an object of charity, 
what business have I to be a member of this Associa- 
tion? I will assert and prove my rights. 



8 

/ am the Association. Unless you can lind another 
man in your number like myself — who never did any- 
thing with his own hands in his life, except to drive a 
pen — who can neither make a joint nor lay a brick, 
neither forge nor weld, neither stitch a seam nor set 
a type — then I only am the Association, and all the 
rest of you have no business here. Why? Because 
you are nothing but manufacturers, and I am the only 
mechanic in the hall. You can Jacture, or make some- 
thing with the manuSf or hand, I can only set mechan- 
ism in operation, and by means of machinery work out 
results in which I have no practical share myself. 

I can only w^ork under the rule which underlies much 
of our modern work : " Never to do anything myself 
which I can get any pne else to do for me." You, on 
the other hand, can exercise your own choice ; if work 
for the head fails to be found you can apply your own 
hands, and you are then safe from want. 

Of how many of our boys and girls can this be said ? 
Is it not time to ask this question : How many of your 
own children can do the work which you have done so 
well? 

What does it mean to do somethino^ with the hand 
and do it well? It means that brain, hand and eye 
have all been well trained together ; it means that the 
whole man has been developed and not one part of him 
only ; such a man can take a wholesome pride in his 
work, it is part of himself; no mechanism can exer 
rival the true work of the human hand, or give the full 
satisfaction of work well done. 

Then to you, the real hand-workers — the crafts- 



9 

men — the true manufacturers, be the honors, if honor 
there is in a name, and let us who can only set mechan- 
ism in motion — who can do only mere machine work — 
take the lower places and defer to you. Only thus, 
gentlemen, can I justify my membership of this Asso- 
ciation as a mechanic, and humbly ask you, my supe- 
riors, the true manufacturers , to listen to a few thoughts 
which seem to me well fitted to this occasion. 

The real truth is we are all mechanics and we are 
all manufacturers — the words have lost their original 
meaning and now signify only two phases of the same 
work ; — they ought not to be parted, and I trust they 
never will be again in Boston, even by the length of 
Huntington Avenue. 

My field of thought is very limited, and I must 
appeal again to the only art of which I know even a 
little, though I have worn the thread bare on other 
occasions. The finest work ever done, or that can 
now be done in the world in the fabrication of cotton 
cloth is still performed by the hand in India in the 
making of the Dacca muslins which have been named 
"Woven Wind." It is an hereditary art, and is still 
conducted as it may have been before iron had been 
smelted and before any tool of modern kind had be- 
come known among men. The cotton plucked with 
the finger is cleaned and separated from the seed by 
the snapping of a bow made of bamboo and strung 
with the gut of an animal ; it is carded with a fish 
bone ; twisted by the use of a stone distaff and the 
human finger — the ends of the warp are fastened in 
a simple loom made of reeds, while the weaver, seated 



10 

upon the margin of a hole dug in the ground, works 
only during the damp hours of the morning and of the 
evening. That is the true picture of a real textile 
manufacturer. All our modern textile machinery is 
but an evolution from, or modification of these pre- 
historic types. 

On not one of our seemingly perfect modern ma- 
chines can the work be equalled of those who have 
inherited this art and whose lissome fingers bear 
evidence of many centuries of training. 

And as it is in this, so is it in many other branches 
of the finest work — the most perfect silk weaving is 
done upon a hand loom of simplest construction — but 
hand work is now a luxury where it is not a necessity. 

The true benefit of modern mechanism consists in 
the quantity of useful work which it enables the work- 
man to perform of sufficiently^ good quality to meet the 
increasing wants of a more and more dense population. 
Were it not for the rapid conversion of the products of 
the soil and of the mine, and the abundance which has 
ensued from the application of modern machinery to 
the arts, the abhorrent dogma of Mai thus would ere 
this have been proved true, and even what are called 
civilized nations would have been swept away, not 
only by war, but by famine and pestilence, caused by 
scarcity. 

Turn your attention for a moment to modern Italy. 
The great power of Rome was based not only or 
mainly upon force or skill in the arts of war. Agri- 
culture was developed in marked degree ; underdrain- 
ing was practised ; the modern reaper finds its arche- 



11 

type among the implements of the Roman Republic ; 
the silo and the practice of ensilage, of which we now 
hear so much, and which may change all the condi- 
tions of New England agriculture, are fully described 
by Tacitus ; the great aqueducts and means of irriga- 
tion and drainage, which are so marvellous in their very 
ruin, saved great areas from the pestilence which now 
scathes them : stock breeding was well understood, and 
the turnip culture, which has worked such vast benefit 
in Great Britain, was practised in Gaul and Brittany in 
the time of the Caesars.* 

But slavery sapped the foundation of this great in- 
dustrial system — labor became ignoble — the mechanic 
was not honored — even the free barbarians of the 
Teutonic race who overwhelmed the great empire, 
themselves succumbed to the enervating luxury of 
slavery and war, until now modern Italy, so long held 
in the bonds of ignorance and superstition, presents 
the only example of a country called civilized, in 
which whole districts are devastated by a loathsome 
disease known as the pellagra, which is caused mainly 
by the want of sufficient and wholesome food. 

It will have a strange sound to you when I speak of 
districts within our own country in which conditions 
analogous to these, although not as bad, may even 
now be studied by any one who is interested in econ- 
omic science. 

I will not speak of those strange and almost hope- 
less people, the clay-eaters and snuif-dippers of the 



* See article on the " Agriculture of the Romans," by Prof. ]McBryde, of 
the University of Tennessee, in the Journal of the American Agricultural 
Association. 



12 

lowlands of some of the Southern States, but take 
you at once to one of the most beautiful and salu- 
brious sections of our country, among mountains, of 
which Dr. Asa Gray says that one — Eoan Mountain, 
in North Carolina — is the most beautiful mountain on 
this continent. 

Within a radius of 150 miles from Mount Mitchell, 
a still higher mountain in this section, that is to say, 
within a circle of a diameter of 300 miles, rise the 
streams which are the sources of rivers flowing north 
into the Ohio, west into the Mississippi, south into the 
Gulf of Mexico, and east into the Atlantic ocean. I 
now quote from Colonel Killebrew, of Tennessee, who 
is in charge of the magnificent collection of timber, 
minerals and products of agriculture from this section 
in the Atlanta Exposition : " We have within this cir- 
cle every mineral that animates industry ; every kind 
of timber needed in the arts ; 160 varieties are in this 
collection, six families or groups of iron ore, every 
kind of coal, winters never so cold as to interfere 
with out-door work, summers never so warm as to in- 
terfere with industry, great plateaus on which no case 
of consumption ever originated, valleys in which a 
light shower falls almost every day and in which the 
growth of grass is three-fold that of the famous blue 
grass section of Kentucky. What we need are mod- 
erate capital and skilled mechanics ; the latter even 
more than the former, because they will speedily con- 
vert our vast resources into abundant capital ; but 
bear in mind, Mr. Atkinson," said Colonel Killebrew, 
"when you carry this word to the North, tell them 



13 

there are two classes of people whom we will never 
tolerate in our land." "What classes are those?" said 
I, in some trepidation. The answer came as promptly 
and as sharply as the crack of a rifle, ^^ Mormons and 
Secessionists " 

I can only give you one example of the industrial 
condition of the great district whose area stretches far 
beyond the 300 miles diameter described by Colonel 
Eallebrew. 

There are still within the great mountain section of 
our own land — within less than two days' journey from 
this very spot — from one to three hundred thousand 
people of our own blood and lineage, who are chiefly 
clothed in homespun fabrics. Bear in mind in this 
connection that by far the largest portion of the popu- 
lation of the whole globe is still scantily clothed in 
hand-made fabrics of cotton or of wool. Keep also in 
view the fact that in occupations to which modern 
machinery is applied, the lowest cost of production is 
compassed by those who earn the highest wages, because 
the measure of their earnings is in precise ratio to 
their skill and industry. Keep this principle and these 
facts in mind and you will then have a dim perception 
of the opportunity which commerce has yet to oflfer to 
the mechanic and the manufacturer of Xew England, 
provided the world can yield us hand-made or natural 
products which we will buy, and take in exchange the 
products of our machinery. Thus we may get ten or 
a hundred days' labor in exchange for one to five days 
of our own work. 

Why has it happened that even a small part of our 



14 

own people are dependent on liand-work ? Is the land 
where they live sterile ? Is the climate bad ? Are the 
conditions of life adverse to progress? Can they not 
make everything that we want? The very reverse, as 
I have told you, is true. There is no richer land on 
this continent than that of some of these interior moun- 
tain valleys. There is no better climate than that of 
some of these high plateaus. There is nowhere else in 
all our broad land such potentiality in mineral, timber 
and products of the soil combined in one place, or so 
much power to produce. 

What, then, has retarded the progress of this people? 
Slavery only. It never indeed penetrated the moun- 
tain land in any great measure, but it surrounded this 
great "Land of the Sky," as it has been so well named, 
and kept its people from commerce with the world. 

It is a strange sight, wdiich may never again be seen 
in this country, but which is now present. In the 
grand central building of the Atlanta Exhibition, wdthin 
the same rail which encloses the beautiful machinery of 
the Willimahtic Linpn Company, alongside a modern 
ring spinning frame working upon No. 100 yarn, are 
two spinning wheels and a hand loom of prehistoric 
type, yet operated now by women who have been trained 
to the work from early childhood. 

Let me here interpolate an account of a little incident 
which brings into bold relief the capacity of modern 
mechanism. You have all heard of the tw^o suits ot 
clothes made in a day for two of the Governors. The 
full dress suit which I now wear was made in less than 
twelve hours from cotton standing in the field in the 



15 

early morning. The cotton gathered thus early was 
passed through a cotton gin before 8 o'clock, it was then 
carried through the cards and spinning frames of the Wil- 
limantic Linen Company, woven under the supervision 
of their representative upon a Crompton loom, dyed in 
the works of Mr. Thomas upon the grounds, cut by 
the skilful hands of Mr. Gosse, of Atlanta, and made 
up on the sewing machines of the Wheeler & Wilson 
Company, which latter machines also gave to the visit- 
ors in the exhibition another example of the best New 
England skill. The suit was sent to me at 6| p.m. at 
Mr. Kimball's house, and arrayed in it, I made a call 
on Colonel Barrows, of the Willimantic Company at 
the neighboring house, by whom the suit was presented 
to me. The suit is lined wdth the silk made by the 
Cheney Brothers. 

I have spoken of the Director General, my excellent 
host during my stay in Atlanta. The record of the 
exhibition is identified with his name ; it was a little 
matter to state its need and give the reasons for it, and 
it would have sufficed but little to instruct a draughts- 
man how" to make the plans, but even the zeal and good 
will of the progressive citizens of Atlanta would have 
failed had not the execution of the plans been in the 
charge of a man of such indomitable energy and execu- 
tive power as H. I. Kimball, and to him is due the full 
meed of credit for w^hat has been done. 

Our friends in the South are ambitious to undertake 
the spinning and weaving of cotton fabrics, but I have 
urged them to be cautious — they have a hundred oppor- 
tunities in which we cannot share — for the more profit- 



16 

able use of capital and labor. It startled them when I 
told them on what a small fraction the profit or loss of 
this branch of industry depended, and said to them they 
must first learn the difierence between a nickel and a 
cent, and when I further added that we had in Massa- 
chusetts about seventy-five million dollars of capital in 
our cotton manufacturing, something over one hundred 
million in our railroads, but that the deposits in our 
savings banks were two hundred and twenty-five mil- 
lion, I fear they hardly believed me. But I added 
that the latter sum, belonging mostly to our working 
people, was just the measure of the difference between 
a cent and a nickel, and I have reason to believe that 
the outcome of the last remark will be the establish- 
ment of a Penny Savings Bank under the supervision 
of Mr. Sidney Root, a thoroughly competent and able 
man, who is the best friend of both the colored and 
the white laborers, and the chief promoter of the Abys- 
sinnian Library ^or colored men, for which he will be 
most glad to receive contributions of books. 

But let us return to the main subject. These women 
who w^ork upon the homespun fabrics may have come 
from one of the interior counties of that beautiful 
Southern mountain land where many of the inhabitants 
have never yet seen a wheeled vehicle — where English 
customs of the seventeenth century still survive, and 
where even the speech of the people marks their isola- 
tion. When I referred to one of her companions as 
Mrs, Hoffman, the gentle young woman who was so 
gracefully operating one of the spinning wheels cor- 
rected me, saying, " Mistress Hofi*man, if you please ! " 



17 

I obtained from the young woman data which I had 
long sought, by which I might measure the saving of 
human labor which has ensued from the application of 
the invention and skill of Arkwright and Cunningham, 
who made the modern cotton mill possible only a cen- 
tury since, and of their successors down to Mason, 
Kuowles and Crompton, living representatives of the 
great mechanics of our own time and our own country. 

la this homespun work two carders, two spinners 
and one weaver, working continuously and arduously 
for ten hours per day, can make eight yards of coarse 
cotton fabrics. In the factory one spinner and two 
weavers, with one hand on preparation and carding, 
can make more than eight hundred yards — more than 
one hundred fold. 

It seems almost magical to see one of these women 
cardino^ cotton on hand cards and brino^ino^ out the rolls 
ready for the spinners even while j^ou are w^ondering 
what she is about to do ; yet less than a century since, 
when President Washino'ton visited the Town of Bos- 
ton, he found one ninth part of its population, 2,000 
out of 18,000 in number, engiiged in making hand 
cards for the use of our own grandmothers, whose 
homespun fabrics then constituted the main portion of 
the material for clothinsr New EnHand. It is a 
singular fact that in a seven days' journey nearly every 
mechanic in this hall can study the progress of a cen- 
tury or more in the history of his own art. The way- 
side charcoal iron furnace, the primitive methods of 
making pottery, the little still which yields* altogether 
too much moonshine whiskey, the house built of hewn 



18 

logs, and every article of furniture, including the loom 
and the spinning wheel, all worked out by hand ; all 
the arduous conditions of our own State of more than a 
century ago are there now ; but fortunately for those 
who dwell there, and for us also, the school-house has 
come with liberty, and the railroad so penetrating every- 
where — not only among the mountains but upon the 
plains. This whole Southern land is now being torn in 
pieces and reconstructed morally and industrially, in 
such a way that we may regard the political froth which 
obscures the deep undercurrent, as a mere scum which 
the wholesome fermentation is discharo^ino^ from the 
stream in order that it may be carried down into the 
great gulf to be heard of no more. 

What then are the functions of the exhibitions like 
our own ; like the late exhibition of the Manufacturers 
and Mechanics' Institute, and like the yet more impor- 
tant one, in view of circumstances and conditions sur- 
rounding it, which is now in progress at Atlanta, 
Georgia? In the treatment of this subject I shall be 
very frank and shall submit my views in order to 
stimulate a wholesome discussion of the matter — they 
are my own, and are submitted without consultation 
with any one. 

Exhibitions are useful in the precise ratio in which 
they serve the purpose of object lessons in industrial 
training. So far as they serve the purpose of merely 
advertising the products which represent the accom- 
plished results of past inventions, they may be expedi- 
ent and profitable, but they are of little significance for 
any other purpose. The mere money receipts from 



19 

visitors are the poorest measure ot success, except so 
far as they affect the interest of their promoters. 

The great exhibition at Atlanta would have been an 
immense success even if the first fear of lack of ade- 
quate receipts from visitors had not been surmounted. 

The contrast between that exhibition and the two 
just ended here is very marked. The merchants and 
tradesmen of Atlanta have made almost no use of it to 
advertise their wares — it is almost absolutely free 
from trash, and it is also almost entirely American in 
the character of its exhibits. The examples ot science 
and of machinery already applied to the useful arts are 
less in number than they were here, but to the majority 
of the people who see them they are of the greatest 
novelty and of the utmost interest. 

On the other hand, the exhibit of crude and unused 
forces, now waiting for the application of science and 
art, exceeds anything ever seen before in this country, 
with the possible exception of the Centennial ; and so 
far as the South is concerned, immeasurably exceeding 
that. 

Everything has a point, and will lead not only to 
the extended use of tools, implements and processes 
already invented, but to the invention or completion of 
inventions not yet introduced at all. Time will not 
suffice, and this is not the place, for me to describe the 
absolute revolution in the cultivation and treatment of 
cotton which is sure to come from this beginning ; 
neither can I here give the facts about the crops of the 
small farmers, who will soon become the controlling 
factors in Southern agriculture. What we have now 






20 

to consider is the true function of industrial exhibi- 
tions ; and here I beg to say that I think the day of 
"World's Fairs" has nearly if not wholly gone by. 
They have been useful in their day, and have doubtless 
given a great stimulus to industry and art, but they 
now seem to me the most cumbrous, costly and con- 
fusing methods of accomplishing results which could 
be devised. 

Let me not, however, undervalue such exhibitions. 
It is doubtless very useful to set great masses of 
people in motion, to get them out of their ruts, and to 
bring the citizens of diiferent States and Territories 
together. One of the very greatest benefits of the 
Atlanta Exposition will be found in such an influence, 
and from the reduction in the excessive rates of passen- 
ger traffic, which has heretofore been the rule on 
Southern railroads, to a uniform excursion rate of one 
cent a mile. The lesson of larger profit from the lower 
rate may perhaps be learned, and the isolation and 
inertia of the Southern agriculturist may be broken up. 

It may also be a great immediate benefit to a city to 
carry out one of the purposes which I understand to 
have been among the lesser aims of the promoters of 
the Manufacturers and Mechanics' Institute, to wit : 
To constitute the exhibition a great fair for the sale of 
goods, and thus to regain and retain branches of traffic 
which ought to be kept in Boston. 

Great fairs, either under the name of World's Fairs, 
or under less ambitious titles may serve these purposes, 
but my purpose is to treat of exhibitions as means of 
education — as object lessons in industrial science. 



, 



21 

Such were the grand and final purposes of our 
lamented friend, the late E. R. Mudge, and if tve may 
venture to refer in any way to the motives of his chief 
associate, and may judge of them by the liberality and 
discretion with whicli he has sustained other institu- 
tions for industrial and technical education, such may 
still be the purpose of one whom we all honor but may 
perhaps not name aloud, although his name is in our 
minds. Such also I believe to be the purpose of every 
man in this old association. 

What, then, should be our future course in respect 
to the use of our building and our future triennial 
exhibition ? We have reason to congratulate ourselves 
upon our commercial success. No one, I suppose, 
now questions the wisdom of the purchase of this lot 
of land or of the construction of this buildino^. Some 
of US may regret that there had not been even greater 
faith, and that the solid construction which marks a 
part of our work had not been carried out in the upper 
sections and in the roof, even though it had cost more. 
We all rejoice in the ample receipts by which our 
treasury has been replenished, and our means of 
accomplishing the charitable purposes of the associa- 
tion have been furnished. But we must not rest con- 
tented : if we do, our friends at the other end of the 
avenue may yet be justified, if they have ever inti- 
mated that our objects were not as broad and as bene- 
ficent as their own. 

Let us then emulate and not compete ; let us bring 
about that hearty co-operation by which the two struct- 
ures may both be put to their best use, and may be 



proved to be none too large for the useful work which 
may be done in them. 

Most of us are, I believe, what are called "self-made 
men," although I naver use that term without recall- 
ing the funny outburst of my late friend, Dr. Francis 
Lieber, when I used it in his presence. " Self-made 
men, indeed!" said he; "why don't you tell me of a 
self -laid egg 9 " 

What we mean is that many of us never went to a 
good school in our lives, and never had the advantage 
of either technical or college education. Our instruc- 
tion has been only that of the bench, the shop or the 
counting room. A course of instruction which is very 
apt to make men dogmatic and obstinate — what little 
they have learned by the somewhat painful method of 
experience they know so well and are so sure of that 
they undervalue all other instruction without the least 
consciousness of their own limitations. On the other 
hand, the graduates of our schools and colleges are apt 
to be so well booked in the theory of science and of the 
arts as to be entirely unaware of the necessity of prac- 
tice and of experience, so that when they come to face 
the actual problems of real work, they are about as 
helpless as if they had never been instructed at all. 

The two classes remind me of John Smith and Jim 
Brown, who ascended Mt. Washington together before 
the railway was built. John went on horseback and 
Jim went afoot. The next day they recorded their 
experience among the verses in Crawford's album as 
follows : " John couldn't sit down any better than Jim 



23 

could stand up." That is about the way of it when 
practice and theory are separated. 

May we not then consider some of the objects which 
our Association may promote, either by itself or in 
co-operation with our friends ? 

First. There is no charity so beneficent as that 
which is extended to those who can help themselves, if 
the opportunity is only ofiered them. 

How many men we have all of us known whose 
brains were so filled with inventive and constructive 
ideas that they could find no time to earn their own 
living; they are the theorists, except for whose work 
we practical men would be deprived of more than half 
our power of work. 

How many men have we all known whose inventions 
have been kept back because they themselves had no 
control over the mechanical appliances needed to per- 
fect them, and who have at last been forced to sell 
their brains for a single mess of pottage to some acute 
business man who makes a great fortune out of their 
ideas, while they remain as poor as ever. 

I therefore suggest that one department of our light 
and useful basement be set aside as the "Inventors' 
Laboratory ;" that it be furnished with adequate tools, 
appliances and power, and be kept for the use of all 
persons who mny be approved by a permanent commit- 
tee of our association ; in which laboratory they may 
perfect or improve their inventions, and may be ena- 
bled to avail themselves of all the appliances and prac- 
tical advice necessary for their work. 

Second. Nothing is more needed at present than 



u 

ail "Industrial Museum." We feel the constant need 
in the work of the Institute of Technology. We need 
technical collections of building materials — of textile 
fabrics, of chemical products, of ores and of timber. 
I could to-day obtain for the asking duplicates of every 
specimen in that superb collection of ores, timber and 
products of agriculture on exhibition at Atlanta, if we 
had a place to put them. The railroad corporations 
interested in developing their respective sections would 
jump at the chance to place the duplicate collection 
here. The Commissioner of Agriculture has already 
claimed the oriofinals for removal to Washino'ton. 

Third, We have, in part by the aid of this Associ- 
ation, established a School of Practical Instruction in 
the Mechanic Arts, in connection with the Institute of 
Technology, it is insufficient in space and in appliances. 
If it could be transferred to one of these two buildings 
and in some way incorporated with the system of in- 
struction of the Boston High and Latin School, it would 
serve as the normal school in mechanics which is becom- 
ing an absolute necessity, if we are to keep the lead 
in competition with other sections of our country more 
richly endowed with resources than we are. 

None of these purposes would interfere with the 
rent or use of our hall or of other portions of our 
building. Our Lowell School of Industrial Design at 
the institute is crowded into narrow quarters far away 
in the attic of our building. Cannot this Association 
spare us one of those beautiful picture galleries for the 
free school of industrial design, which cannot now 
graduate its pupils fast enough to meet the demand. 



25 

Must we continue to send our sons to Europe in 
order that we may find a weaving school in which they 
can master the art of the loom ? 

Fourth. There is nothing inconsistent with our 
objects and aims in the purpose of the Manufacturers 
and Mechanics' Institute to hold a great annual fair for 
the exhi])ition and sale of goods in their building; 
rather let us co-operate with them, and during the 
period of their fair aid them in attracting customers 
and help our own finances by a continuous musical 
festival in our hall, and perhaps by an exhibition and 
sale of all kinds of works of art in our galleries. 

Fifth, Let us invite them to cooperate in our 
triennial exhibition. Both of our exhibitions of this 
year were imperfect and unsystematic. It is not neces- 
sary to discuss the reasons — the fiiults were, under all 
the circumstances, unavoidable, but this ought not to 
happen again. 

I venture to suggest that the committee on the next 
triennial exhibition should be appointed at once, with 
instructions to invite the appointment of similar com- 
mittees on the part of the Manufacturers and Mechan- 
ics' Institute, of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology, of the American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, of the Museum of Fine Arts, and of 
the Boston Society of Natural Historj'. 

It may then happen that such a joint committee 
would assio^n the buildino- of the Manufacturers' Insti- 
tute to the display of perfected machinery and prod- 
ucts, and our building to a systematic exhibit of the 
processes of industry and invention, of new materials 



26 



and problems in the arts, with such other examples as 
would show the progress made in the period which 
will elapse between the present date and the time of 
our next exhibition. 

Would it not be well to consider what science and 
art have not yet accomplished ? 

Our waste of fuel is awful — the best results yet 
obtained in a stationary engine are, I believe, less than 
eleven per cent, of the absolute value of the coal — 
in the locomotive about three per cent. 

The true pavement can only be seen in Western 
Kentucky, where the ferruginous gravel hardens under 
wear into a natural concrete and excels any artificial 
pavement yet invented. 

The true material for covering roofs remains to be 
discovered or perfected. 

We are saved the smoke nuisance only by the acci- 
dent of our position. 

We have no incombustible varnish with which to 
retard the action of heat upon wood so as to give us a 
little more time to put out a fire. 

The doctors cannot tell us how to avoid obesity, and 
hardly know what the germ of some diseases is. 

Good acoustic properties are the accident of archi- 
tecture rather than the result of science, unless our 
Mr. Preston has solved the secret and really planned 
the admirable properties of this hall. 

Whoever improves on Arkwright and finds a true 

substitute for the leather cover of the top rolls of our 
spinning frames will add five or ten per cent, to the 
capacity of every spiildle in the world. 



27 

The baneful electricity developed in all our textile 
factories waits to be put to use. 

The potato bug is too much for us, and the cotton 
worm not only cuts off a large part of every crop but 
fills the rest with the pernicious bits of leaf, when he 
bites off more than he can chew. 

Our domestic furnaces desiccate the atmosphere of 
our houses and give us all the catarrh. 

The best loom in use makes a dreadful clatter and 
will Sometimes almost shake a mill to pieces, unless its 
vibrations are set to a different beat on a portion of the 
number. 

Who can pretend to have solved the problem of dis- 
posing of sewage and keeping our water pure and 
sweet ? 

May we not well indict the scientists and inventors 
for their incapacity to meet our simplest needs ; and 
while doing so may we not offer the only service which 
we practical men can render them, that is, give them 
the place for their feet, the tools for their hands and 
the shelter for their heads in our permanent building ? 

Gentlemen : five millions of dollars are asked merely 
in order that we may prepare to hold a World's Fair in 
Boston — let but the hundredth part of this sum be 
devoted to organizing the work which I have imper- 
fectly laid out, and to extending the methods which I 
have sketched thus faintly, and I venture to predict 
that greater progress in industry and art would ensue 
than could be brought about by any great World's Fair 
in the present decade or any other ; and a tenth part of 



28 

the five millions would richly endow the new work for 
all time to come. 

We have no choice in this matter ; our only advan- 
tage over our neighbors is what has been so well called 
" the healthy stimulus of prospective want," the sharp 
bite of our east wind and of our winter snows, all of 
which keep us from being as lazy as our neighbors may 
dare to be. We have in Massachusetts the most ade- 
quate railway service in proportion to our area of any 
State in the world — one linear mile to each four 
square miles of surface. It will take 120,000 miles 
more railroad to bring the rest of the country up to 
one-fourth of our standard. Here is work for me- 
chanics — continuous, sure and steady. In the sixteen 
years that have elapsed since the end of the war we 
have constructed 66,000 miles out of the 100,000 by 
which this country is now served — a little more than 
4,000 miles in each year. Is it too much to expect to 
construct an average of 6,000 miles, in each year of 
the next sixteen, and thus double our present service? 
We are building more than that this year, but we may 
be going too fast. What force will this require? Three 
hundred and fifty thousand men — more in number than 
all our factory operations combined. Can we spare this 
work ? 

In Atlanta I called upon our Southern brethren to 
thank God that the Potomac had not become the Rhine 
of this Continent, and that two jealous and hostile 
nations were not watching each other over the ram- 
parts on their frontiers. Well and heartily did they 
respond. I gave them this raihva}^ problem, in which 



29 



they have most at stake, calling upon them to note the 
startlino^ fact that if we had been oblio^ed to maintain 
standing armies in proportion to our population as it 
will be for the next sixteen years — in the same meas- 
ure which the standing armies of France and Germany 
bear to this people, our force Avoiild number 700,000 
men. Such would, perhaps, have been our need had 
secession been successful. 

With half this number we can double our railway 
service, and with the productive work of the remamder 
we can bring the commerce of the world to our feet. 

Such is the picture wbich I would spread before your 
mental vision. Ours is the grand work of destroying 
the vested wrongs of other nations, of making the 
blood-tax of standing armies impossible to be borne, 
of carrying peace, good will and plenty to all the 
nations of the world. In this great work the Cap- 
tains of our industry are our master mechanics, our 
manufacturers and our farmers. Will you aid in dedi- 
cating our buildings to the work and make them the 
hiofh schools of industrial education? 



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